On Thursday, Fireblocks, a provider of digital asset infrastructure, announced that it had raised $550 million from institutional investors, making it one of the largest fundraising rounds in the cryptocurrency sector in recent years.
The most recent investment put the company’s value at $8 billion.
According to Fireblocks, the fundraising was spearheaded by D1 Capital Partners and Spark Capital, with participation from General Atlantic, Altimeter, Index Ventures, and CapitalG, Alphabet’s growth fund.
In a phone conversation, Michael Shaulov, Fireblocks’ chief executive officer, said, “We’re planning to use the funds for additional investment into new use cases in the digital asset area, such as decentralised finance, non-fungible tokens, gaming, entertainment, and music.”
Decentralized finance is the market segment that allows crypto-denominated financial transactions to take place outside of traditional institutions.
On the other side, non-fungible tokens are one-of-a-kind digital assets that cannot be replaced.
Fireblocks works with businesses and financial institutions to develop cryptocurrencies and digital assets by providing the necessary infrastructure, such as wallets, to keep the digital assets safe and secure.
Shaulov stated that his company’s mission is to turn every firm into a cryptocurrency business.
According to a recent Gartner report, around one-fifth of significant enterprises would use digital currencies by 2024, implying that huge corporations’ adoption of crypto will accelerate in 2022 and beyond.
Fireblocks, according to Shaulov, has a network that connects its members to the digital currency capital markets and allows for quick payment and cash transfer settlements.
Fireblocks, he explained, attempts to make fund transfers “as secure as possible,” because “a lot of the hacks don’t happen while you’re storing it, but when you’re transferring or selling it.”
According to Dan Sundheim, creator of New York-based D1, one of the primary investors in the latest investment round, Fireblock’s infrastructure secures about 15% of daily crypto transaction traffic.
